Health tips for the greatest day

More Informations About Sunscreen Work

Look out over many beaches this summer and the B-52s classic “Rock Lobster” may start playing in your head.

Baking potatoes, baking in the sun
Put on your nose guard, put on the lifeguard
Pass the tannin’ butter …

Despite all the warnings about skin cancer (the most common form of cancer in the United States) and the threat of wrinkles, for many people the lure of a tan is just too hard to resist.

Over the years people have gone to some crazy lengths to make sure their skin got that toasty glow, as any lifeguard can tell you. Everyday Health talked to two veteran lifeguards to find out what’s changed — and what hasn’t — on the beach.

Baby Oil and Tanning: The Bad Old Days
Anyone who was young in the 1960s and ’70s remembers the days when a bottle of baby oil and maybe a reflective blanket were regulation equipment for sun worshipers.

“I’ve seen people use baby oil, even motor oil,” says 30-year-lifeguard Pat Hendrick, marine safety captain of the Beach Safety Division in Hollywood, Fla. “I used to use Coppertone oil when I was a lifeguard in high school. Thirty years ago, we never heard of skin cancer or anything like that.”

Colby Kauffman (pictured at left), a sergeant with the Ocean City Beach Patrol in Maryland for 19 years, has similar experiences. “When I grew up, we did the baby oil, we laid out by the side of the pool,” she says. “Nobody mentioned sunblock when I first started [as a lifeguard].”

A Trend Toward Protection
Despite government reports that fewer than 40 percent of Americans bother to slap on sunscreen, these veteran lifeguards say they’ve noticed more and more beachgoers taking precautions against the burning rays.

“There are still people out there who love to get tan, but they’re putting on sunblock,” says Kauffman. “There’s a lot more hats and umbrellas, rash guards,” which cover a swimmer or surfer like a T-shirt made of bathing suit material. says Kauffman. She’s also noticed more younger children wearing protective beachgear like hats and sunglasses, something that as a mom, she applauds. “I have two daughters, and I’m harder with them than I am with myself [when it comes to sun protection]. Most of your sun damage happens before you’re 18.”

“It’s really the other extreme, people covering up and protecting themselves,” says Hendrick. He’s noticed many more visitors to his beach using pop-up tents or even regular-sized tents to shade themselves from the heat, although this isn’t ideal in terms of water safety. “We tell people, you put a pop-up tent on the shoreline, you affect our visibility. We can’t see your kids.”

Lifeguards Getting the Message
The younger generation of lifeguards are also wiser about sun protection. “Our guys are pretty health-conscious to begin with, but younger lifeguards are way more protective of their health than I was,” says Hendrick, who now makes sure to wear “the highest number SPF” he can find. Besides being issued SPF 30 sunscreen, the lifeguards on his beach serve their shifts in stations enclosed by with tinted windows. When Hendrick started, the stations were “an open box with an umbrella.”

Kauffman says her beach patrol distributes sunblock, lip protection, and zinc oxide to all of their 200 lifeguards, and they encourage the staff to get a regular checkup for any suspicious moles. She’s also careful to cover up herself. Because she’s on a four-wheeler when on duty, “I wear a visor and polarized sunglasses to protect my eyes.”

Besides the threat of cancer, Kauffman is also conscious of the wrinkle-causing potential of the sun. “We’re all going to get wrinkles, but not everyone is going to get melanoma. I definitely wear a thicker sunblock on my face than I do on my body, my hands, and my neck — the places that tend to show their age sooner.”

And the results of decades of sun worship aren’t pretty. “You see people in their 70s, obviously they’re the one that used the baby oil and the iodine when they were kids and continue to do so. They’ve got that wrinkled leathery skin,” says Hendrick. He refers to the New Jersey woman who has made headlines for being so sun-baked, some have wondered if she’s afflicted with so-called tanorexia. “Her face looked like a baseball glove,” he says.

A (Blistered) Day at the Beach
But some still take their sun worship to the extreme, determined to go home with that killer tan and impress their friends.

Tourists are “only here one day,” Kauffman says, “so they’re going to get as much sun as they can. Then you see them walking around the boardwalk and they’re bright lobster red.”

Down in Florida, Hendrick has noticed the same pattern. “What I think is crazy are people who burn ridiculously on the first day — not so much people from here, but the tourists. They really want to go home and brag to their coworkers about their tan. They put the oil on the second day, on top of the blisters. These people end up actually injured,” says Hendrick.

Advice From the Pros
When it comes to beach protection, here are some tips from the pros:

To do its job, sunscreen needs time to soak into your skin. Apply it at least 30 minutes before going to the beach. “Some people put it on at the beach, then they go in the water and it washes right off,” says Hendrick.
Even if it’s overcast with no visible sun, you still need to cover up and wear sun protection. “The UV rays are still coming through,” says Kauffman.
Stay hydrated by drinking plenty of fluids.
And while you’re protecting yourself, don’t forget to enjoy your time in the sun. “I’m from New Jersey,” says Hendrick. “I know that Memorial Day comes, people have been locked in their houses for seven months. They come out and do whatever they can to amplify the summer months ’cause it’s a short period.”

Remember, says Kauffman, “A tan is a ‘healthy look,’ but it’s not a healthy way of life.”

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